How to Stroke around Objects: Gimp (any version)

How to Stroke around Objects: Gimp (any version)



This tutorial will teach you how to stroke around objects in Gimp, this is relatively easy, I guess the hardest part would just to be using the Gaussian Blur tool, but then again that part is not that hard.

1. Upload your picture onto Gimp.
This will be mine, feel free to use.


2. Duplicate your later by right-clicking your current layer that you want to stroke and click "duplicate layer". Drag the layer you just duplicated to the bottom, beneath the original layer you uploaded.

3. Take your magic wand tool, which looks like this, , and on your duplicated layer click around the object (so like the background) so the background is highlighted with the magic wand.


4. Then go to the Select Tab then to Invert, so now your object is only selected, not the background.


5. Choose a colour right now in your colour palette and that will be the colour of your stroke around the object. Now, go to the tab Edit, then to Stroke Selection.


6. You'll get a pop-up, you can pick whichever option you want but I want to pick "Stroke line" because it is easier that way. You can choose pattern if you want the stroke to be a pattern, and the line width is the thickness of the stroke.

Pick a couple pixels bigger than you want the original stroke, when you stroke w/o duplicating a layer and dragging it to the bottom, the stroke goes inside and covers the pixels of the objects. Plus when we blur it, it will shrink a little.


7. Deselect the magic wand by taking the Rectangle Marquee tool and clicking it on the canvas (the part that is not selected by the magic wand)
It now looks like this:


8. The stroke looks sharp and not smooth, so we are going to blur it. Still selecting the duplicated layer, go to Filters, then go to Blur, then Gaussian Blur.

9. You'll get a pop-up, pick whatever number you think looks best for the stroke to make it smooth, don't go too much or it will look more like drop shadow, use the "Preview" to help you. I will choose 2.



Click okay, and save your image, PNG is a good file type to save.
And after step 9, you're finished! This is my final result.